We taxied to the airport and caught a one hour Tame flight to Lago Agrio, a town east of Quito. It was easier than using the bus which would have been an overnight journey. We then spent two hours on the bus with about 20 other people to "the bridge". "The bridge" crossed a small river which was our access to our destination, Jamu Lodge, a camp run by Samona Expeditions. As the bus left, some of the passengers noticed to their dismay that their luggage was missing, so the bus was radioed to return later.

Each waiting boat could hold about 10 people and was like an elongated dugout canoe but made of fibreglass with a 50 HP outboard motor on the back end. We met our guide Naiser and other passengers, mostly consisting of approximately 40 American students including many young girls with skinny bare legs that looked quite out of place in this environment. But, of course so did we

. The boat travelled downstream over logs and rocks and the "driver" deftly pulled the propeller out of the water when it could hit something. I really wondered if we would ever arrive without major damage to the boat or the propeller but we finally got to the lodge after a three hour trip. During our trip, our guide pointed out the local wildlife such as monkeys, a rare grey hawk, and oro pendula birds in the trees on the side of the river. The lodge was in the Cuyabeno Reserve and on the Cuyabeno River in the headwaters of the Amazon. It consisted of a ring of thatched roofed cabins on stilts, interconnected by a raised walkway.

After a good meal at the lodge communal dining room we did a night walk with our guide who pointed out frogs and spiders whose environment we had invaded. There was a particularly large black hairy tarantula on the thatch ceiling above our dining room. A girl from Belgium saw it and started to scream uncontrollably. It took her friend about 15 minutes to calm her down. The tarantula remained motionless.

With no electricity we went to bed early and looked forward to the next day's program.